Robert Dallek
Robert A. Dallek is an American historian specializing in the presidents of the United States, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon.
In 2004, he retired as a history professor at Boston University after previously having taught at Columbia University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and Oxford University.
He was awarded the Bancroft Prize for his 1979 book Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945, as well as other awards for scholarship and teaching.
Personal life
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Dallek is the son of Rubin and Esther Dallek. He is Jewish.Dallek attended the University of Illinois, graduating with a B.A. in history in June 1955. He did graduate work at Columbia University, earning an M.A. in February 1957, and a Ph.D. in June 1964. While working on his Ph.D., he was a history instructor at Columbia.
He married Geraldine Kronmal on August 22, 1965, and is the father of Matthew Dallek, Professor of Political Management at the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University.
Academic career
In 1964-1994, Dallek advanced from assistant to full professor of history at the Department of History at University of California at Los Angeles. From 1966 to 1968, he was a graduate adviser. From 1972 to 1974, he served as vice chair of the department. From 1981 to 1985, he was a research associate at the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute. In 1993, he was a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology, and from 1994 to 1995, he was the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University, which in 1995 awarded him an honorary M.A.Since 1996 Dallek has been a visiting professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, and a professor of history at Boston University. From 2004 to 2005 he was Montgomery Fellow and a visiting professor in the history and government departments at Dartmouth College.
Dallek is a member of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.
''An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963''
In 2003, Dallek published the New York Times Bestseller An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, the first major biography of John F. Kennedy in almost 40 years. Based on archival resources and unprecedented access to his medical records, especially those stored at JFK Presidential Library, it revealed his secret struggle with major health problems as well as his love affairs, the backstage role of his father, his appointment of his brother Robert F. Kennedy to the office of United States Attorney General, and speculations about what the president would have done about the Vietnam War if he had lived.One unintended consequence of the book is that as a result of direct citation of Barbara Gamarekian's oral history interview, one of the former White House interns, Mimi Alford, was eventually tracked down by the New York Daily News and compelled to release a statement confirming the relationship between her and JFK. Alford later penned her own book, "Once Upon a Secret", published in 2012.
''Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power''
In 2007, Dallek published Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power, which claims that they were visionaries and cynics at the same time, in an attempt to explain the ups and downs of their diplomatic careers. "The careers of both Nixon and Kissinger reflect the extent to which great accomplishments and public wrongdoing can spring from inner lives." The book was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in History.Works
Books
Democrat and Diplomat: The Life of William E. Dodd 1898: McKinley's Decision – The United States Declares War on Spain The Roosevelt Diplomacy and World War II The Dynamics of World Power: Western Europe The Dynamics of World Power: A Documentary History of United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1973 ' The American Style of Foreign Policy: Cultural Politics and Foreign Affairs Ronald Reagan: The Politics of Symbolism- '
Journal articles
- "Franklin Roosevelt as world leader". The American Historical Review, 76 : 1503–1513.
- "National mood and American foreign policy: a suggestive essay". American Quarterly, 34 : 229–261.
- "Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam: the making of a tragedy". Diplomatic History, 20 : 147.
- "Tales of the tapes". Reviews in American History, 26 : 333–338.
- "John F. Kennedy's Civil Rights Quandary". American History 38.3 : 36.
Essays in edited volumes
American perceptions of the Soviet Union, in Abbott Gleason, Cold War-Cold Peace: Soviet American Relations, 1933–1983- 'Triumphant America in a shaken world', in Sanford J. Ungar, Estrangement: America and the WorldWhen Presidents Become Weak, in Walter Isaacson, ''Profiles in Leadership: Historians on the Elusive Quality of Greatness''